A Client-Driven Approach for Channel Management in Wireless LANs

— We propose an efficient client-based approach for channel management (channel assignment and load balancing) in 802.11-based WLANs that lead to better usage of the wireless spectrum. This approach is based on a “conflict set coloring” formulation that jointly performs load balancing along with channel assignment. Such a formulation has a number of advantages. First, it explicitly captures interference effects at clients. Next, it intrinsically exposes opportunities for better channel re-use. Finally, algorithms based on this formulation do not depend on specific physical RF models and hence can be applied efficiently to a wide-range of inbuilding as well as outdoor scenarios. We have performed extensive packet-level simulations and measurements on a deployed wireless testbed of 70 APs to validate the performance of our proposed algorithms. We show that in addition to single network scenarios, the conflict set coloring formulation is well suited for channel assignment where...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Arunesh Mishra, Vladimir Brik, Suman Banerjee, Aravind Srinivasan, William A. Arbaugh
• Keywords: Channel Assignment, Communications, Efficient Client-based Approach, INFOCOM 2006, Load Balancing